Telecom Ramblings

Hurricane Sandy has barreled through New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, leaving an impressive wake of destruction for the press to report on – even if they keep showing the same @#%&ing clips over and over.  But with two of the internet’s main hubs (NY/NJ and Ashburn) and some of its most trafficked routes in Sandy’s path, what about the communications grid? No really, I’m asking you folks. [Read more →]

In one of its periodic Stat Flashes late last week, Vertical Systems Group illustrated how fast Ethernet is taking over. The bandwidth purchased for business Ethernet is now leaving behind that feeding legacy services in a big way. Here’s their graphic: [Read more →]

The thing about hurricanes in and around the Northeast is that for the average person they’re usually overhyped if one can’t see the ocean from one’s window. But that doesn’t hold for the service providers that keep the fiber, copper, and tower infrastructure running across the region. They’re all bracing for what might be a historic impact from the rapidly approaching Hurricane Sandy. [Read more →]

The Asia-Pacific regional carrier Pacnet is further extending itself into Mainland China. They have won an enhanced value-added service license from China’s Ministry of Industry and information Technology that expands their IP VPN coverage area from a mere 20 cities to a much wider scope of 23 provinces.  Two weeks ago, [Read more →]

We have a new job listing on the Ramblings’ Jobs board this week.   Competitive Telecoms Group is seeking [Read more →]

That giant cable across the South Atlantic that eFive has been working on now has a supplier signed up. According to regional business reports, the South African firm eFive Telecoms has awarded the contract to TE SubCom. [Read more →]

Earlier this month, the US House of Representatives issued a report describing a potential national security threat posed by gear from Huawei and ZTE due to their ties to the Chinese military.  If you read this site often, you know my opinion.  But what’s yours?  Do you think this is credible, or just an election year gimmick?  Or a bit of both? [Read more →]

This article was authored by Dylan Bushell-Embling, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

ZTE has revealed it swung to a Q3 loss of 1.7 billion yuan ($272.3 million) – its first ever quarterly loss as a public company – blaming a continued slump in the [Read more →]

As it closed the books on Q3, inap had some interesting expansion news to share yesterday.  They unveiled plans for a big new 100,000 square foot data center in Secaucus, New Jersey, which will boost their New York City metro area inventory by 45%.  This buildout plan comes on the heels of the [Read more →]

With the proposed Softbank transaction still fresh in our minds yet far from completion, Sprint has at least a couple of quarters to push forward in its current form. Today’s earnings report wasn’t even part of that of course, as not even rumors of the deal had emerged by the end of the third quarter.  Sprint’s Q3 was [Read more →]

The media delivery and network infrastructure businesses have become increasingly intertwined over the past few years. One place where they mingle directly is at Hibernia Atlantic and its Hibernia Media division, which specializes in delivering video feeds over their fiber-based network. The company has lately embarked on a path of expansion through consolidation, and is seeing rapid growth in the occasional use business. Here to give us an overview of Hibernia Media’s recent M&A activity and further expansion plans is Kathy Perone, Chief Operating Officer of Hibernia Atlantic. [Read more →]

Both Akamai and Infinera reported earnings after the market closed, and both companies had good news to share and both stocks are up after hours. [Read more →]

The data center space continues to hop with activity, here is another set of quick takes from Cologix, IO, Telx, and ViaWest: [Read more →]

Over in Europe, Interoute has been keeping busy on the cloud side of things lately, with a customer win and a new service to offer to the enterprise. While their primary asset has traditionally been their fiber, in the past few years Interoute has poured resources into the datacenter and cloud market in hopes of better [Read more →]

Materially higher growth rates for its core network services continued to prove elusive for Level 3 in the third quarter.  Revenues and earnings per share both came in a little shy of analyst estimates in this morning’s quarterly report, but the company nevertheless maintained its guidance for full year EBITDA, free cash flow, and revenue growth trends. [Read more →]

jnpr sailed through their third quarter, easily besting both guidance and analyst estimates for all metrics.  Looking forward, fourth quarter guidance remained relatively conservative on earnings per share, but still straddling expectations for revenue.  Here’s a quick tabular summary with the usual context: [Read more →]

Today’s roundup features metro fiber news from Lightower and Optimum Lightpath, new channel capabilities from Telarus, and another cloud win for Viawest: [Read more →]

The southeastern metro fiber specialist FiberLight is implementing a wireless backhaul network featuring gear from cien, according to an announcement by the network equipment vendor this morning. We haven’t heard much from FiberLight much recently, although I know they have been steadily laying fiber in West Texas. [Read more →]

Over the next day and a half, three more of the usual early reporters from telecom and internet infrastructure will report earnings:  Akamai, Juniper, and Infinera.  Expectations this quarter seem fairly balanced as a whole across the sector: cautious, but without a sense of impending doom.  Analysts seem mostly in synch with the guidance they’ve been given.  Here’s a quick preview: [Read more →]

Here’s a quick rundown on some recent news from colo and the cloud:  another peering partner for CoreSite, an anchor customer for ViaWest, a cloud offering from TW Cable, and a new project by some heavy hitters in Manhattan: [Read more →]

The OECD’s Rudolf Van der Berg posted a fascinating article this morning over on the OECD Insights blog summarizing a few tidbits of a recent report on traffic exchange and peering between today’s networks. Did you know that more than 99.5% of traffic exchange agreements are nothing more than a handshake, with no written or formal agreement at all? [Read more →]

For Level 3, this quarter’s numbers to be released on Wednesday morning will mark the fourth quarterly report to include the Global Crossing business, and the good news is that the questions around Level 3’s future are about its enterprise growth, and not about its integration progress. The integration has been going as steadily as anyone could realistically have hoped for.  But the company’s second quarter numbers still didn’t yet show as much of the growth potential that investors really want to see developing, and so now everyone will be looking even closer [Read more →]

Another job was posted on the Ramblings’ Jobs board this weekend from the Cable MSO side of the tracks.  Layoff news over in Europe this week has been thick, with Teliasonera and Alcatel-Lucent detailing cutbacks, but at least in the US metro fiber business things are still hopping.  Cox Business is looking for a [Read more →]